It is established that enantiomers can possess unique activities when interacting with chiral biological systems (e.g. enzymes).1a As a consequence, the pharmaceutical industry has migrated to manufacturing and marketing single enantiomeric forms of chiral drugs (e.g. 80% of small-molecule drugs approved by the FDA in 2006 were chiral and 75% were single enantiomers).1a The growing economic importance of single-enantiomer production has led to significant expansion of research into chiral synthesis.1b 
The catalysis approach towards asymmetric synthesis offers several distinct advantages (e.g. cost savings, less waste generation) over more traditional protocols such as chiral stoichiometric reagents and chiral auxiliaries. In particular, transition metal (TM) catalysis has revolutionized organic synthesis.2 The near constant improvement in the field of TM catalysis is undoubtedly due in large part to the introduction of new and improved ligands, which allows for desired transformations to be carried out in a more efficient manner (i.e. milder conditions, lower catalyst loadings, higher yields and higher enantioselectivities when applicable).
Recently, N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHC) have had a significant impact in the field of achiral TM catalysis. NHC (e.g. 1-3) have proven themselves to be viable, and in many cases, superior ligands to the more traditional phosphorus based ligands.3
The improved characteristics of NHC flow from the fact that they are superior two electron donors to the TM centre.4 Unfortunately, however, there are only a handful of TM-catalyzed transformations employing chiral NHC ligands that have afforded products with high enantioselectivities.5 As a result, chiral phosphorus-based ligands continue to dominate the field of enantioselective catalysis.1b 
Unlike NHC, acyclic diamino carbenes (ADC)6 (4) have attracted scant attention from the synthetic community.7
Certain achiral ADC have been examined in TM catalyzed cross-coupling reactions.8 It was demonstrated that ADC are effective ligands for three important cross-couplings reactions viz Suzuki, Sonogashira and Heck reactions.8 